Sometime in the coming decade, Oregon's revenues from gasoline taxes will start to fall as motorists drive increasingly fuel-efficient vehicles, including vehicles that don't use gasoline at all.

But while gas tax revenue declines, the state's roads will still require upkeep and upgrades, currently paid for principally by fuel taxes. That's why some farsighted people in the Oregon Department of Transportation and the Legislature are focusing on ways to replace the soon-to-be-eroding fuels tax revenue.

The Transportation Department is reconstituting the state's Road User Fee Task Force, which is scheduled to meet for the first time later this month. Composed at least partly of state legislators, it will grapple with helping Oregon navigate a road of falling gas tax revenue.

James Whitty, manager of ODOT's Office of Innovative Partnerships and Alternate Funding, says he hopes the task force could suggest new legislation to help guide the electric vehicle industry as it designs and builds the next generation of vehicles. For example, he suggests, Oregon could require electric vehicles to be equipped with a wireless transmitter sending odometer information -- not locational information -- to data collection devices. The state could then use mileage information to help calculate a road-use tax.

"We have to start thinking past the gas tax," says task force member Rep. Terry Beyer, D-Springfield, chairwoman of the House Transportation Committee.

The state's study of how to pay for transportation improvements gained national prominence in 2007, when ODOT published a report on its 12-month pilot program to capture mileage information for 299 motorists in the Portland metro area. That program gained new attention last week when a commission chaired by two former U.S. transportation secretaries issued a report calling for new investment in the nation's transportation infrastructure, as well as structural changes in its financing. Oregon's experiment with vehicle-mile data collection figured prominently in the report, published by the Miller Center at the University of Virginia.

In the 2006-07 pilot program, administrators installed equipment to help collect motorists' driving information. As word of the program spread, it drew criticism from some who thought it would enable the government to know where they've driven. Whitty says he thinks some objected primarily to the idea that the government could force them to install a device in their cars.

The next phase of Oregon's effort could defuse both of those concerns by tying data collection strictly to the odometer, not to a geolocation device, and also by specifying the kind of equipment that manufacturers, not motorists, must install. Or an entirely different scheme could emerge from the task force, the competitive market or the Legislature.

At any rate, Oregon is showing itself a leader in addressing a vexing national problem. In a state seeking to weather urgent economic challenges, it's encouraging to see that some state officials are actively looking further down the road.